Why my Internet nickname is gnobal

I’ve been asked why my Internet nickname is gnobal so many times, I lost count. There is a story behind it, only I usually avoid telling it. So my usual answer to the people who ask is: “It’s a long and boring story.” But it’s not the real reason. The reason lies in the story itself, so here it is:

During the days I started with the Internet (around the age of 17) I used to listen to Cypress Hill, a rap band. Among other things, they were advocating the usage and legalization of Marijuana. Many of their song lyrics had the word bong in them. I didn’t even know what a bong was, but the word sounded cool and I used “bong” as my nickname.

Then there was IRC. I used to log on with “bong” as a nickname and people would tell me that it’s cool and ask me whether I wasn’t afraid to get arrested or anything (mostly US residents asked that). I usually told them that we don’t take nicknames so seriously in Israel. Anyway, in IRC there was no way to guarantee your unique nickname, and soon enough other people started using “bong” as a nickname.

I decided that I wanted to have a unique nickname (this way people who knew me on IRC could find me easily), so I simply reversed the letters and got my new nickname – “gnob”. And indeed, the new nick held up for a while, until this one guy started logging in and using “gnob” as his nickname. We used to have fights on IRC, flooding each other every time one of us found out the other had already been logged on as “gnob”.

So I had to modify my nickname again to make it unique. And that’s when I decided to add the suffix “al” to “gnob” and got “gnobal”. If you do a Google search for gnobal you can find mostly stuff that is related to me. It’s that unique! Hopefully it doesn’t mean anything obscene in any language.

This was the long and boring story on why my Internet nickname is gnobal.